Technologue: Up 'n' Away

Cars may never fly, but Hondas will in 2010

Honda is getting into the biz-jet business. This may surprise most folks, but not the true Hondaphile. Company founder Soichiro Honda grew up in a small town where his first glimpse of an automobile at age eight ignited a passion for things mechanical. With a formal education that ended at elementary school, he opened a business motorizing bicycles immediately following WWII. By 1959, Honda was the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer (still is). He then rekindled his earlier passion for cars, producing the S500 roadster. Powered by an aluminum twin-cam slant-four with a roller-bearing crank and a 10,000-rpm redline driving through an independent rear suspension using aluminum chain-drive cases as trailing arms, this was no copycat car.Another passion of Honda's was flying. Both he and his wife Sachi were licensed pilots. In 1986, Soichiro's 80th year, his company opened a fundamental-technology research center to study humanoid-robot design, biotechnology, and aircraft design. As it did when entering the car business, Honda approached the biz-jet project from scratch, tossing out every paradigm.

They conducted early studies of different wing designs by strapping scale models to the roof of a van because Honda didn't have a wind tunnel. The first prototype plane grafted a new composite wing onto an existing turbo-prop fuselage (prototype aircraft MH-01). Then came an all-composite airplane featuring forward-swept wings topped with twin Pratt & Whitney jet engines (MH-02). It flew successfully but ultimately was deemed uncompetitive and mothballed in 1996.Persistent engineers then made a presentation to Honda management suggesting myriad improvements based on their latest computer and wind-tunnel testing. Their new design was approved in 1997 and test-flown in December 2003. It went on sale last October for $3.65 million, and over 100 customers signed up for deliveries starting in 2010. The HondaJet will be built in the U.S. in five-passenger exec-jet or six-passenger air-taxi configurations, sold and serviced in collaboration with Piper Aircraft.As biz-jets go, this one promises to fly higher (43,000 feet) and faster (420 knots, or about 483 mph) than its direct competitors, while burning 30 to 35 percent less fuel with cleaner emissions than jets of comparable performance, giving it a range of 1180 nautical miles. It's also roomier and quieter inside than the competition. Sounds like a Honda.The roominess and low weight are attributable to clever thin-walled composite materials that form the fuselage. A pressure-cured ultrastiff graphite and epoxy material forms the central tube while the nose and tailcone are of sandwich construction. The wing and tail structures are aluminum. Mounting the engines to the wings rather than the fuselage frees up valuable luggage space (at 57 cubic feet, the trunk is up to half again as large as most). Overwing engine mounting can create aerodynamic shock waves that increase drag at high speeds, but by locating the front face of the engine far aft on the wing at just the right height on a sponson with an airfoil shape angled just so, Honda managed to make this design perform more efficiently than a wing with no engine.Another aero highlight is the peculiarly shaped nose, which bulges above the compound-curved windshield and below it in a jowllike formation that keeps airflow attached and flowing smoothly. Finally, the HF-120 jet engines and their control electronics were designed by Honda for optimum airflow efficiency and will be manufactured in a joint venture with General Electric.The HondaJet is poised to shake up an industry that's been just about dormant. Where will the next surprise Honda show up? I wonder if young Soichiro ever played with rockets? I'd eagerly drive a Honda to Mars.